DRAGNET The Big Death Program Guide by Elizabeth McLeod John Randolph Webb was not an especially prepossessing man. He wasn’t es- pecially big, he wasn’t especially rugged, and even his best friends had to admit that he wasn’t especially handsome. Nor was he especially flamboyant, in that brashly flamboyant manner that characterized much of late-1940’s America. If you met him on a Los Angeles sidewalk in 1949, you might size him up as a moderately successful salesman for a moderately successful insurance company, and walk on past without giving him much of a second thought. Just another guy, in a world of just-another-guys. But you’d be wrong, because that quiet fellow with the lugubrious expression and the unfortunate haircut was perhaps the most influential figure in early 1950s radio. In fact, he would soon be an equally influential figure in television…and after that, a movie star. He’d soon have his face on magazine covers, on bill- boards, on all sorts of licensed merchandise…and he’d even make a record album in the guise of a suave, smoky, jazz- tinged vocalist. Before the 1950s were out, he’d have his hand in every form of popular media. Jack Webb. Yep, Joe Friday. Dour, monotone-voiced Ser- geant Joe Friday of the Los Angeles Police Department. It wouldn’t be going too far to say that he was one of the most significant creative figures in show business. And he was a far better actor than he ever got credit for being -- because who
Transcript
DRAGNETThe Big Death
Program Guide by Elizabeth McLeod
John Randolph Webb was not an especially prepossessing man. He wasn’t es-pecially big, he wasn’t especially rugged, and even his best friends had to admit that he wasn’t especially handsome. Nor was he especially flamboyant, in that brashly flamboyant manner that characterized much of late-1940’s America. If you met him on a Los Angeles sidewalk in 1949, you might size him up as a moderately successful salesman for a moderately successful insurance company, and walk on past without giving him much of a second thought. Just another guy, in a world of just-another-guys.
But you’d be wrong, because that quiet fellow with the lugubrious expression and the unfortunate haircut was perhaps the most influential figure in early 1950s radio. In fact, he would soon be an equally influential figure in television…and after that, a movie star. He’d soon have his face on magazine covers, on bill-
boards, on all sorts of licensed merchandise…and he’d even make a record album in the guise of a suave, smoky, jazz-tinged vocalist. Before the 1950s were out, he’d have his hand in every form of popular media.
Jack Webb. Yep, Joe Friday. Dour, monotone-voiced Ser-geant Joe Friday of the Los Angeles Police Department. It wouldn’t be going too far to say that he was one of the most significant creative figures in show business. And he was a far better actor than he ever got credit for being -- because who
CD 9B: “The Big Light” - 11/02/1952A movie director crushed by a fallen stage light might be a murder victim.
CD 10A: “The Big Dive” - 11/09/1952What’s the connection between a ship in San Francisco and a murder victim in Los Angeles?
CD 10B: “The Big Eavesdrop” - 12/14/1952While operating undercover, Friday and Smith overhear evidence of a murder.
Elizabeth McLeod is a journalist, author, and broadcast historian. She received the 2005 Ray Stanich Award for excellence in broadcasting history research from the Friends Of Old Time Radio.
If you enjoyed this CD set, we recommend Dragnet: The Big Make, available now at www.RadioSpirits.com.
www.RadioSpirits.comPO Box 1315, Little Falls, NJ 07424
would ever have imagined that the man behind that bland, methodical radio and television persona could have cast such a long shadow. But he did.
It didn’t seem that way at first, of course. Jack Webb (below) was just another ex-GI looking for something to do with his life when he landed in San Francisco during the last months of World War II. Out of the service on a hardship discharge (due to his being the main financial support for his mother and grandmother), he needed a job and he needed one fast. He’d been an art student in college, he’d taken some night classes dabbling in acting and radio production, and he loved jazz. Of the two options, radio offered better opportunities -- but he was more of a listener and admirer than a musician. Those facts, combined with his distinctive raspy voice, proved enough to get him in the door at radio station KGO (ABC’s Bay Area outlet), where the draft had cut a broad swath through the announcing staff. He landed a job spinning records, reading commercials, and doing a bit of writing here, a bit of acting there. In short, he was doing what any ambitious youngster might do around a radio station in 1945. Do the work, went the ethos of the business, show what you’ve got, and eventually there will be an opening to something better.
And so it went for Jack Webb. By the middle of 1946, Jack Webb was a major creative force at ABC-San Francisco. He was the co-creator and star of Pat Novak For Hire, an extreme (if that is the right word) response to radio’s current craze
for purple-prose private-eye programs. No prose was ever more purple than which was cooked up by co-creator Dick Breen (left). Webb’s deliberate, flat-footed delivery of that prose made seedy waterfront shamus Novak one of the most memorable characters to slug his way out of radio’s postwar fog. Listeners weren’t entirely sure if they should take the show straight, or if the whole thing was a vast put-on -- there was, in truth, a bit of both in the production -- but it became a popular hit down the coast in Los Angeles. And it brought Jack Webb to the attention of those in radio who were interested in making the most of young talent.
CD 3A: “The Big Grandma” - 10/19/1950A kindly old lady leaves a trail of bad checks in her wake.
CD 3B: “The Big Juvenile Division” - 01/17/1952A “junior Hitler” attracts a gang of delinquent followers.
CD 4A: “The Big Almost No-Show” - 01/31/1952A missing persons investigation leads to murder.
CD 4B: “The Big Phone Call” - 02/14/1952Friday chases down a stickup man wanted for robbing a jeweler.
CD 5A: “The Big Fire” - 03/13/1952A crooked landlord strong-arms his tenants.
CD 5B: “The Big Border” - 03/20/1952Two escaped cons make a run for Mexico.
CD 6A: “The Big Streetcar” - 04/03/1952A trolley plays a key role in a murder investigation.
CD 6B: “The Big Show” - 04/10/1952Friday investigates a possible child-abandonment case.
CD 7A: “The Big Bunco” - 04/17/1952A con man sells businesses that he doesn’t own.
CD 7B: “The Big Elevator” - 04/24/1952Friday investigates the death of a woman whose body was found in a hospital elevator.
CD 8A: “The Big Safe” - 05/01/1952A safe cracker leaves behind a vital clue.
CD 8B: “The Big Pill” - 10/19/1952Who poisoned two Marines in a sleazy hotel room?
CD 9A: “The Big Number” - 10/26/1952Half a license number is the only clue in a bank robbery.
Dick Breen (left) with Jack Webb Martin Milner is heard as Sgt. Bill Lockwood
Webb spent the next few years appearing in variations on the Pat Novak theme -- the names changed, but the character was essentially the same hard-boiled waterfront type from program to program, from network to network. He also got a small break into the movies, where he made perhaps the most valuable connection of his life. The film in question was a low-budget B picture about LA cops on the trail of a killer. The connection in question was Marty Wynn -- a real LAPD sergeant who was on the set as technical adviser. Webb and Wynn grew friendly, and out of their discussions emerged an idea for a radio crime drama without all the dressing. There would be no wisecracking PIs, no bumbling cop sidekicks, no outré plots -- just the real story of real police officers investigating real cases (with the “names changed to protect the innocent”).
By mid-1949, those conversations with Wynn led to Dragnet. It premiered on NBC with the promise of “police dramas of unprecedented realism,” produced with the full cooperation of the Los Angeles Police Department. The exaggerated voiceovers of the Pat Novak days were gone, replaced by laconic “just the facts” narration. This was provided by Webb, as Sgt. Joe Friday, over a thick bed of intricate sound effects that put the listener right in the squad room and at the various crime scenes as each story unfolded. It may be a bit of a cliché to say that there had been nothing like Dragnet on radio before --, but the cliché, in this particular case, is accurate. Joe Friday lived in no impressionistic Columbia Workshop-style experimental soundscape. Instead, you heard Friday’s world exactly as it was, right down to the sound of cheap re-soled shoes scuffing over unpolished office floors. Hearing Friday’s world, you could imagine the cold half-empty coffee cups, the ashtrays overflowing with butts, the stale atmosphere mingling equal parts smoke and disinfectant. Even if you had never set foot in a metropolitan police station in your life, somehow the dialogue, the narration, and the sound effects combined to bring that setting to vivid life in your imagination.
Radio critics seized on Dragnet as a bold step forward in radio technique. John Crosby of the New York Herald Tribune, perhaps the most influential radio critic in the country, lavished praise on the program’s authenticity, and others followed his lead. Dragnet was not a huge popular success in the ratings -- but radio’s creative faction took notice of the reviews. They realized that if there was room for one “ultra-realistic” program on the air (in an era where radio drama was increasingly under fire for the cookie-cutter sameness of its productions), there was certainly room for another. A few tried to duplicate Dragnet itself, but -- lacking Webb’s single-minded commitment to the concept -- they were never able to capture it. Others had more luck taking the idea in another direction. At CBS, producer/director Norman Macdonnell followed Webb’s lead in injecting
6 3
LIGGET & MYERS TOBACCO CO.presents
DRAGNET
starring JACK WEBB
asSgt. Joe Friday
BARTON YARBOROUGHas
Sgt. Ben Romero
BARNEY PHILLIPSas
Sgt. Ed Jacobs
MARTIN MILNERas
Sgt. Bill Lockwood
BEN ALEXANDERas
Sgt. Frank Smith
Written byJAMES MOSER
JOHN ROBINSON
CD 1A: “The Big Pair” - 09/21/1950A furniture racket preys on a young girl and her elderly grandfather.
CD 1B: “The Big Death” - 09/28/1950Has Joe Friday become a hired hitman?
CD 2A: “The Big .38” - 10/05/1950A revolver proves a vital clue in Friday’s investigation of a shooting.
CD 2B: “The Big Quack” - 10/12/1950A fake doctor running a fake medical school is on the run.
Dragnet comic strip ran for nearly three years, although its Joe Friday looked less like Jack Webb than a slightly bored Frank Sinatra. Pocket Books issued a series of Dragnet paperback novels, with Webb’s stern visage scowling from each cover. People didn’t talk about “multimedia franchises” in the 1950s, but not only was Dragnet just such a phenomenon, it was one of the most successful of its decade…and it made Jack Webb a wealthy man.
He was wealthy enough, in fact, to indulge in the occasional vanity project -- like his famous turn as a distinctive jazz vocalist. Webb was no stranger to the recording industry -- an album featuring music from Pete Kelly’s Blues had done well, as had an LP release of Dragnet’s popular “Big Little Jesus” Christmas episode. But in 1958, Webb tried his hand in the burgeoning “mood music” genre, commissioning an all-star group of jazzmen to back his vocals on an album called You’re My Girl. Smiling slyly out from the album cover in a smoking jacket, cigarette in hand, with a sultry lady in a strapless gown slinking blurrily in the background, Webb held forth, not as a singer, but a sort of poetic narrator -- reciting the lyrics of jazz standards in his Joe Friday voice. This created an effect that might perhaps be called “hypnotic.” It was unlike anything Webb had ever done before, and while listeners at the time might not have known quite what to make of it, it nevertheless blazed a trail to be followed in later years by such unlikely musical talents as Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner.
All of these side products are now popular collectibles among novelty and nostalgia enthusiasts. Whatever their camp value -- and make no mistake, there is nothing campier than Jack Webb reciting “Try A Little Tenderness” over a smoky Billy May orchestration -- they do prove an important point. Jack Webb truly was, for a time and in his time, a “king of all media.” He was a savvy, self-aware businessman who made his fortune in a racket that kicked many of his contemporaries to the curb. But when you brush all that aside and look at his best work -- the radio years of Dragnet -- you must also conclude that he was, in fact and truth, one of greatest creative talents that medium ever produced.
4 5
a more realistic flavor to the high-adventure stories featured on Escape. He brought a clearly Webbian sense of honesty to the oft-maligned Western genre with a groundbreaking series of his own: Gunsmoke. Writer Larry Marcus and actor Frank Lovejoy teamed up to bring much of the same sensibility to the crusading-newspaperman drama in Night Beat. Radio realism, it seemed, was here to stay -- and the medium had Jack Webb to thank for it.
Meanwhile, Webb was ready to diversify as the 1950s dawned. Dragnet was a natural for television, and Joe Friday’s shabby, constricted world fit perfectly on the seventeen-inch black-and-white screens of the day. Backed on both television and radio by the broad advertising reach of Ligget & Myers Tobacco, Dragnet became an omnipresent part of the early-fifties popular-culture scene. It was so prominent, in fact, that it was parodied not once, but twice in the space of just the first twelve issues of Mad. (See example below.)
Now securely ensconced as one of broadcasting’s elite figures, Webb used his clout to gain approval for other projects, notably Pete Kelly’s Blues. That moody drama, set in a 1920s jazz club, was a program that allowed him to both expand his acting range and hobnob with many of his musical idols. (They were brought in to provide an authentic musical background, which contributed even further to the realism of the setting.) Movies were also on the horizon. Dragnet was, of course, destined for the big screen. The lurid Technicolor splashed across the feature by Universal Pictures distracted from the usual semi-documentary feel demanded by Webb. However, the film was successful enough to make Webb himself a marketable screen personality apart from the Joe Friday persona. This led to two subsequent starring features: a film version of Pete Kelly’s Blues, followed by Webb’s fine, nuanced performance as a tough Marine sergeant in The D. I.
Although more than a few Dragnet episodes began with disclaimers warning parents that the program was “for you, not your children,” Joe Friday was a surprisingly potent force in licensed merchandising. Webb lent his face and the Dragnet name to a wide range of products targeting kids -- toy cars, toy badges, cap pistols, coloring books, a board game, even an elaborate “Dragnet Crime Lab” kit. A licensed Jack Webb's You're My Girl album
Dragnet parody ("Dragged Net") in Mad
Dragnet comic strip ran for nearly three years, although its Joe Friday looked less like Jack Webb than a slightly bored Frank Sinatra. Pocket Books issued a series of Dragnet paperback novels, with Webb’s stern visage scowling from each cover. People didn’t talk about “multimedia franchises” in the 1950s, but not only was Dragnet just such a phenomenon, it was one of the most successful of its decade…and it made Jack Webb a wealthy man.
He was wealthy enough, in fact, to indulge in the occasional vanity project -- like his famous turn as a distinctive jazz vocalist. Webb was no stranger to the recording industry -- an album featuring music from Pete Kelly’s Blues had done well, as had an LP release of Dragnet’s popular “Big Little Jesus” Christmas episode. But in 1958, Webb tried his hand in the burgeoning “mood music” genre, commissioning an all-star group of jazzmen to back his vocals on an album called You’re My Girl. Smiling slyly out from the album cover in a smoking jacket, cigarette in hand, with a sultry lady in a strapless gown slinking blurrily in the background, Webb held forth, not as a singer, but a sort of poetic narrator -- reciting the lyrics of jazz standards in his Joe Friday voice. This created an effect that might perhaps be called “hypnotic.” It was unlike anything Webb had ever done before, and while listeners at the time might not have known quite what to make of it, it nevertheless blazed a trail to be followed in later years by such unlikely musical talents as Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner.
All of these side products are now popular collectibles among novelty and nostalgia enthusiasts. Whatever their camp value -- and make no mistake, there is nothing campier than Jack Webb reciting “Try A Little Tenderness” over a smoky Billy May orchestration -- they do prove an important point. Jack Webb truly was, for a time and in his time, a “king of all media.” He was a savvy, self-aware businessman who made his fortune in a racket that kicked many of his contemporaries to the curb. But when you brush all that aside and look at his best work -- the radio years of Dragnet -- you must also conclude that he was, in fact and truth, one of greatest creative talents that medium ever produced.
4 5
a more realistic flavor to the high-adventure stories featured on Escape. He brought a clearly Webbian sense of honesty to the oft-maligned Western genre with a groundbreaking series of his own: Gunsmoke. Writer Larry Marcus and actor Frank Lovejoy teamed up to bring much of the same sensibility to the crusading-newspaperman drama in Night Beat. Radio realism, it seemed, was here to stay -- and the medium had Jack Webb to thank for it.
Meanwhile, Webb was ready to diversify as the 1950s dawned. Dragnet was a natural for television, and Joe Friday’s shabby, constricted world fit perfectly on the seventeen-inch black-and-white screens of the day. Backed on both television and radio by the broad advertising reach of Ligget & Myers Tobacco, Dragnet became an omnipresent part of the early-fifties popular-culture scene. It was so prominent, in fact, that it was parodied not once, but twice in the space of just the first twelve issues of Mad. (See example below.)
Now securely ensconced as one of broadcasting’s elite figures, Webb used his clout to gain approval for other projects, notably Pete Kelly’s Blues. That moody drama, set in a 1920s jazz club, was a program that allowed him to both expand his acting range and hobnob with many of his musical idols. (They were brought in to provide an authentic musical background, which contributed even further to the realism of the setting.) Movies were also on the horizon. Dragnet was, of course, destined for the big screen. The lurid Technicolor splashed across the feature by Universal Pictures distracted from the usual semi-documentary feel demanded by Webb. However, the film was successful enough to make Webb himself a marketable screen personality apart from the Joe Friday persona. This led to two subsequent starring features: a film version of Pete Kelly’s Blues, followed by Webb’s fine, nuanced performance as a tough Marine sergeant in The D. I.
Although more than a few Dragnet episodes began with disclaimers warning parents that the program was “for you, not your children,” Joe Friday was a surprisingly potent force in licensed merchandising. Webb lent his face and the Dragnet name to a wide range of products targeting kids -- toy cars, toy badges, cap pistols, coloring books, a board game, even an elaborate “Dragnet Crime Lab” kit. A licensed Jack Webb's You're My Girl album
Dragnet parody ("Dragged Net") in Mad
Webb spent the next few years appearing in variations on the Pat Novak theme -- the names changed, but the character was essentially the same hard-boiled waterfront type from program to program, from network to network. He also got a small break into the movies, where he made perhaps the most valuable connection of his life. The film in question was a low-budget B picture about LA cops on the trail of a killer. The connection in question was Marty Wynn -- a real LAPD sergeant who was on the set as technical adviser. Webb and Wynn grew friendly, and out of their discussions emerged an idea for a radio crime drama without all the dressing. There would be no wisecracking PIs, no bumbling cop sidekicks, no outré plots -- just the real story of real police officers investigating real cases (with the “names changed to protect the innocent”).
By mid-1949, those conversations with Wynn led to Dragnet. It premiered on NBC with the promise of “police dramas of unprecedented realism,” produced with the full cooperation of the Los Angeles Police Department. The exaggerated voiceovers of the Pat Novak days were gone, replaced by laconic “just the facts” narration. This was provided by Webb, as Sgt. Joe Friday, over a thick bed of intricate sound effects that put the listener right in the squad room and at the various crime scenes as each story unfolded. It may be a bit of a cliché to say that there had been nothing like Dragnet on radio before --, but the cliché, in this particular case, is accurate. Joe Friday lived in no impressionistic Columbia Workshop-style experimental soundscape. Instead, you heard Friday’s world exactly as it was, right down to the sound of cheap re-soled shoes scuffing over unpolished office floors. Hearing Friday’s world, you could imagine the cold half-empty coffee cups, the ashtrays overflowing with butts, the stale atmosphere mingling equal parts smoke and disinfectant. Even if you had never set foot in a metropolitan police station in your life, somehow the dialogue, the narration, and the sound effects combined to bring that setting to vivid life in your imagination.
Radio critics seized on Dragnet as a bold step forward in radio technique. John Crosby of the New York Herald Tribune, perhaps the most influential radio critic in the country, lavished praise on the program’s authenticity, and others followed his lead. Dragnet was not a huge popular success in the ratings -- but radio’s creative faction took notice of the reviews. They realized that if there was room for one “ultra-realistic” program on the air (in an era where radio drama was increasingly under fire for the cookie-cutter sameness of its productions), there was certainly room for another. A few tried to duplicate Dragnet itself, but -- lacking Webb’s single-minded commitment to the concept -- they were never able to capture it. Others had more luck taking the idea in another direction. At CBS, producer/director Norman Macdonnell followed Webb’s lead in injecting
6 3
LIGGET & MYERS TOBACCO CO.presents
DRAGNET
starring JACK WEBB
asSgt. Joe Friday
BARTON YARBOROUGHas
Sgt. Ben Romero
BARNEY PHILLIPSas
Sgt. Ed Jacobs
MARTIN MILNERas
Sgt. Bill Lockwood
BEN ALEXANDERas
Sgt. Frank Smith
Written byJAMES MOSER
JOHN ROBINSON
CD 1A: “The Big Pair” - 09/21/1950A furniture racket preys on a young girl and her elderly grandfather.
CD 1B: “The Big Death” - 09/28/1950Has Joe Friday become a hired hitman?
CD 2A: “The Big .38” - 10/05/1950A revolver proves a vital clue in Friday’s investigation of a shooting.
CD 2B: “The Big Quack” - 10/12/1950A fake doctor running a fake medical school is on the run.
2 7
would ever have imagined that the man behind that bland, methodical radio and television persona could have cast such a long shadow. But he did.
It didn’t seem that way at first, of course. Jack Webb (below) was just another ex-GI looking for something to do with his life when he landed in San Francisco during the last months of World War II. Out of the service on a hardship discharge (due to his being the main financial support for his mother and grandmother), he needed a job and he needed one fast. He’d been an art student in college, he’d taken some night classes dabbling in acting and radio production, and he loved jazz. Of the two options, radio offered better opportunities -- but he was more of a listener and admirer than a musician. Those facts, combined with his distinctive raspy voice, proved enough to get him in the door at radio station KGO (ABC’s Bay Area outlet), where the draft had cut a broad swath through the announcing staff. He landed a job spinning records, reading commercials, and doing a bit of writing here, a bit of acting there. In short, he was doing what any ambitious youngster might do around a radio station in 1945. Do the work, went the ethos of the business, show what you’ve got, and eventually there will be an opening to something better.
And so it went for Jack Webb. By the middle of 1946, Jack Webb was a major creative force at ABC-San Francisco. He was the co-creator and star of Pat Novak For Hire, an extreme (if that is the right word) response to radio’s current craze
for purple-prose private-eye programs. No prose was ever more purple than which was cooked up by co-creator Dick Breen (left). Webb’s deliberate, flat-footed delivery of that prose made seedy waterfront shamus Novak one of the most memorable characters to slug his way out of radio’s postwar fog. Listeners weren’t entirely sure if they should take the show straight, or if the whole thing was a vast put-on -- there was, in truth, a bit of both in the production -- but it became a popular hit down the coast in Los Angeles. And it brought Jack Webb to the attention of those in radio who were interested in making the most of young talent.
CD 3A: “The Big Grandma” - 10/19/1950A kindly old lady leaves a trail of bad checks in her wake.
CD 3B: “The Big Juvenile Division” - 01/17/1952A “junior Hitler” attracts a gang of delinquent followers.
CD 4A: “The Big Almost No-Show” - 01/31/1952A missing persons investigation leads to murder.
CD 4B: “The Big Phone Call” - 02/14/1952Friday chases down a stickup man wanted for robbing a jeweler.
CD 5A: “The Big Fire” - 03/13/1952A crooked landlord strong-arms his tenants.
CD 5B: “The Big Border” - 03/20/1952Two escaped cons make a run for Mexico.
CD 6A: “The Big Streetcar” - 04/03/1952A trolley plays a key role in a murder investigation.
CD 6B: “The Big Show” - 04/10/1952Friday investigates a possible child-abandonment case.
CD 7A: “The Big Bunco” - 04/17/1952A con man sells businesses that he doesn’t own.
CD 7B: “The Big Elevator” - 04/24/1952Friday investigates the death of a woman whose body was found in a hospital elevator.
CD 8A: “The Big Safe” - 05/01/1952A safe cracker leaves behind a vital clue.
CD 8B: “The Big Pill” - 10/19/1952Who poisoned two Marines in a sleazy hotel room?
CD 9A: “The Big Number” - 10/26/1952Half a license number is the only clue in a bank robbery.
Dick Breen (left) with Jack Webb Martin Milner is heard as Sgt. Bill Lockwood
DRAGNETThe Big Death
Program Guide by Elizabeth McLeod
John Randolph Webb was not an especially prepossessing man. He wasn’t es-pecially big, he wasn’t especially rugged, and even his best friends had to admit that he wasn’t especially handsome. Nor was he especially flamboyant, in that brashly flamboyant manner that characterized much of late-1940’s America. If you met him on a Los Angeles sidewalk in 1949, you might size him up as a moderately successful salesman for a moderately successful insurance company, and walk on past without giving him much of a second thought. Just another guy, in a world of just-another-guys.
But you’d be wrong, because that quiet fellow with the lugubrious expression and the unfortunate haircut was perhaps the most influential figure in early 1950s radio. In fact, he would soon be an equally influential figure in television…and after that, a movie star. He’d soon have his face on magazine covers, on bill-
boards, on all sorts of licensed merchandise…and he’d even make a record album in the guise of a suave, smoky, jazz-tinged vocalist. Before the 1950s were out, he’d have his hand in every form of popular media.
Jack Webb. Yep, Joe Friday. Dour, monotone-voiced Ser-geant Joe Friday of the Los Angeles Police Department. It wouldn’t be going too far to say that he was one of the most significant creative figures in show business. And he was a far better actor than he ever got credit for being -- because who
CD 9B: “The Big Light” - 11/02/1952A movie director crushed by a fallen stage light might be a murder victim.
CD 10A: “The Big Dive” - 11/09/1952What’s the connection between a ship in San Francisco and a murder victim in Los Angeles?
CD 10B: “The Big Eavesdrop” - 12/14/1952While operating undercover, Friday and Smith overhear evidence of a murder.
Elizabeth McLeod is a journalist, author, and broadcast historian. She received the 2005 Ray Stanich Award for excellence in broadcasting history research from the Friends Of Old Time Radio.
If you enjoyed this CD set, we recommend Dragnet: The Big Make, available now at www.RadioSpirits.com.
www.RadioSpirits.comPO Box 1315, Little Falls, NJ 07424
